12/9/97

Ask any Canadian

The September Showdown of 1972. The best of Canada against the best of the Soviet Union, finally, to establish the best of the world.

    It wasn't merely a hockey series, it was their way of life versus ours, and it brought out unparalleled patriotic chauvinism in two countries with a lot to prove.
    Canada didn't have a lot to boast about. The largest nickel deposits. World's longest coastline. We could even have bragged about being the largest country in the world - except that the Soviet Union was bigger.
    But if nothing else, we were the unchallenged hockey power of the world. 'Unchallenged' indeed.
    The Soviets were obsessed with success, to show the world the superiority of communism. In any international confrontation, second best was considered a cultural disgrace.
    Professional hockey was all Canadian, even on the rosters of the American teams of the National Hockey League.
    Amateur - or in the case of the Soviets, 'amateur' - hockey, was owned by the Soviets. They had hardly ever lost a game in the world championships or the Winter Olympics since 1956. (That was the last year Canada won the worlds, until the early '90s.)
Huh, said Canada: just put those pasty-faced Russkies against our best; you'll see...
    Then came the news: an eight-game series, the Soviet national team against an NHL all-star team. Communism against The Free World.
    One or two Canadian hockey writers actually predicted the Soviets would win a game, as a sort of noblesse oblige. They were decried as either anti-Canada, or nuts. John Robertson was just plain nuts: the brilliant, iconoclastic columnist for the Montreal Star wrote that he was convinced the Soviets would win the series 6-2. And if he was wrong, he wrote, he would publicly eat his column, soaked in Russian dressing.
    Alan Eagleson, one of the organizers of the series, spoke for most Canadians when he said: 'Anything less than an unblemished sweep would bring shame down on ... national pride.'

GAME ONE: The first of the four games to be played on Canadian soil was at the Montreal Forum. When the Soviets appeared, Canadian players actually felt sorry for them: their equipment, from the skates up, was shoddy. Their red CCCP jerseys were ill-fitting. Their goaltender, Vladislav Tretiak, laughably thin and small.
    Thirty seconds into the game, Canada scored. Within six minutes, all of Canada was beginning to feel sorry for them. Team Canada hadn't yet broken a sweat and they were already up 2-0.
    It was going to be an embarrassment, we all agreed.
    It was.
    The Soviets won 7-3.
    Canada was in absolute shock. What went wrong? Everyone offered an excuse: it was preseason, the players weren't in shape, they were playing with unfamiliar line-mates, it was a fluke.

GAME TWO: In Toronto, we put things right. Montreal's tiny speedster Yvan Cournoyer, 5-foot-7 on his tippy-toes, burst down the side for an explosive goal. His giant teammate, 6-foot-6 Pete Mahovlich, scored one of the most memorable goals of all time, driving one-on-one straight down the middle, faking the defenseman out of the way and then feinting Tretiak this way, then that, then back again, and hockey belonged to Canada. They won, 4-1 to knot the series 1-1.

GAME THREE: In Winnipeg, an omen of things to come. Canada led 4-2, but CCCP, helped by two shorthanded goals, came back for a 4-4 tie. But it was an exhilarating game: coach Harry Sinden said afterwards: 'Aren't we all glad to be alive to watch that kind of hockey?' 

GAME FOUR: Fans still debate which result was more depressing: the first loss in Montreal, or the 5-3 loss in Vancouver. Gilbert Perreault of Buffalo scored an amazing unassisted goal, stickhandling the length of the ice, but the rest of the game was a disaster.
    By now, Canadian fans had become intimately familiar with the Soviet players: their names, their styles, their strengths - but not their weaknesses. There weren't any. They played perfect, positional, disciplined hockey, with uncanny teamwork, in front of a goalie, Tretiak, many Canadians still say was the best ever.
    Kharlamov, Mikhailov, Vasiliev, Yakushev - they became household names, alongside Esposito, Clarke, Dryden.
    During the game in Vancouver, disillusioned fans began cheering for the wrong team. Afterwards, Canada's hulking leader Phil Esposito, of the Boston Bruins, stated on live TV that he and his teammates were disgusted with the fans' betrayal, with the criticism and derision in the media.
    Adding to the dissension, two of the players, Vic Hadfield and Jean Ratelle, both of the New York Rangers, had earlier abandoned the team.
    With a 14-day break before the final four games, all in Moscow, and with Canada down 1-2-1, the country fell into deep depression. Were we not the best? And if not, what else mattered? (Remember, this was Canada.)

GAME FIVE: From the TV coverage, you could distinguish the 9,000 Russian fans in the Moscow arena from the 3,000 Canadians who had traveled to Russia to cheer their team.
For one thing, the long-haired, pastel-clothed Canucks cheered - loudly, boistrously, antagonistically to the Muscovites. The dour locals, who if they made any noise at all, merely whistled, were jolted by their flag-waving, leather-lunged,whooping guests.
    Who can ever forget the refrain chanted from the Canadian-infested side of the arena: 'Da, da Ca-na-da; nyet, nyet So-vi-et!'
    We had what to cheer about: with but nine minutes left in game five, Canada was coasting along with a 4-1 lead.
    And we lost!
    Anisin and Shadrin scored eight seconds apart, Gusev tied it up two minutes later, and Vikulov won the game with five minutes to play.
    The Soviets now led the series 3-1-1. Canada would have to win the last three.

GAME SIX: Paul Henderson of the Toronto Maple Leafs scores the clincher in a 3-2 victory. The Soviets' lead is trimmed to 3-2-1.
    Paul Henderson?! If any player had no business being on the roster of Canada's finest, it was Henderson. On a team packed with superstars, many of them future Hall-of- Famers, journeyman Henderson should have been in the stands, waving a flag.

GAME SEVEN: The scoring is dominated by standouts Esposito and Yakushev, each with two goals. It's 3-3 with the clock ticking down. Montreal's Serge Savard flicks a pass to center ice and Henderson picks it up, skates past two CCCP defensemen, and with 2:06 remaining, he scores a second consecutive game-winner, Canada wins 4-3, the series is tied 3-3-1, and if any Canadian was at that moment on his deathbed, he was damn well going to wait two days for Game Eight.

GAME EIGHT: The finale was telecast live in Canada in mid-afternoon, and it is not an understatement to say that the country stopped to watch. I was in high school then, and like all schools coast to coast, and all businesses, I would guess even all of Canada's cops and robbers, all activity was suspended.
    The only people in the streets were huddled around TV showrooms. Classrooms were empty, as all students massed together in gyms and hallways; if ever there was a moment when all Canadians, in all its time zones, were doing the same thing at the same time, this was it.
    The Soviets lead 1-0. Then 2-1. Then 3-2. Then 4-3. Every time Canada scores, the Soviets respond.
    But with about three minutes left in the second period, the USSR scores out of turn: 5-3.
    The final period.
    Esposito takes a pass from Mahovlich and beats Tretiak. 5-4.
    With seven minutes to go, Espo, playing utterly possessed, clicks with Cournoyer - and it's tied!
    Suddenly, a commotion: Alan Eagleson, a brash Toronto lawyer, is visited by Moscow police, who try to evict him from his seat behind Canada's bench. Enraged, the Canadian players abandon the game and rush to the bench area; towering Mahovlich clambers into the stands and grabs Eagleson away from the police; menacingly, the players surround him and then skate him across the ice to the rest of the Canadian fans. But Eagleson has the last word: at mid-ice, in full view of millions of witnesses, he gives the police - or maybe all of Russia - the finger.
    (No one had any doubt, then or now, that the Soviets staged the arrest to upset the Canadian players at just the right time.)
    The game resumes, and the seconds tick down. With three minutes to go, then two, then one, everyone concedes that a no-winner, no-loser result would be just.
    Everybody, perhaps, but the players.
    Coach Sinden calls Henderson off the ice to put a fresh skater on. But for the only time in his career, as he would later recall, Henderson disobeys the coach. He heads for Tretiak - but falls behind the net.
    The puck goes toward the corner. Three Soviets charge in after it; Henderson is on his knees and Espo far away, cruising in the wrong direction.
    Esposito shifts. One Soviet passes to another. Henderson is scrambling to his feet. Espo reaches, intercepts, and in the same motion scoops it behind him, blindly, toward the net. Tretiak stops it. But Henderson is there! Henderson shoots, save! He gets the rebound, 26 seconds left, he shoots...
    6-5!
    The most dramatic goal in hockey history. Ask any Canadian sports fan where he was at that moment; ask him the highlight of his life. Twenty-five years later, ask him what Henderson's goal means to him, to Canada.

BUT DID Canada really win?
    Canadian author Mordecai Richler, in Home Sweet Home, wrote that 'the moral victory clearly belonged to Russia.'
    When everyone had stopped jumping up and down, hugging strangers, kissing each other, shrieking from euphoric relief and weeping for joy, the dreadful truth crept in:    Canada was not undeniably the greatest hockey country on earth.
    'After the series,' wrote Richler, 'nothing was ever the same again in Canada. Beer didn't taste as good. The Rockies seemed smaller, the northern lights dimmer.'
    Maybe. But the hockey was never better.